Today was a very busy, but also very informative day in Morocco! My day began with an early morning breakfast from my host mom before she walked me over to CCCL to head back on the bus to Casablanca!
Our first site visit of the day was to Casablanca Technopark, which was launched in 2001 to help support startups. Similar to the Anou Cooperative that we learned about earlier, the Technopark helps create community and networking opportunities for founders to help grow their businesses. Community was a common theme throughout the site visits today, as well as the fact that a lot of these places were founded by the Moroccan government which I thought was really interesting. During our second site visit to 1337 Coding School, our guide was explaining how the government has begun to fund these types of institutions to turn open innovation into a service that can support Morocco as a whole.
This concept applies to UM6P (Mohammed VI Polytechnic University) as well, which is my group’s focus for this trip. During our third site visit around the UM6P campus I learned that it was actually originally created in 2017 to be a corporate research institution, but overtime has evolved into a university focused on applied research to solve problems. Similar to the other sites, the university was founded by OCP Group and the King to foster innovation in Morocco that goes back to supporting initiatives throughout the country. It really is quite brilliant. This ensures that people who are receiving an education are using it to create a real impact on their country, often in the form of startups (which leads to even more job creation!). As I was learning today, Startgate is a tool for startups on UM6P’s campus which helps them grow (which was again founded by OCP Group). It is all very fascinating how all of these groups connect to each other and back to Morocco overall. I do wonder whether Startgate competes with the Casablanca Technopark and will have to look into that more.
All the site visits today were very interesting, and it was cool to see how they all connect! Based on discussions today, it seems like UM6P’s biggest challenges right now are keeping international staff and students in Ben Gueir, because while the campus continues to grow the area around it has fallen behind. I think that considering this with all of the strengths of the university (business model, community-focused) will allow my group to make strong recommendations to help support UM6P in the future.
In between all of these visits I got try a Korean bulgogi dish for lunch, play ping pong near our hotel pool in Marrakesh, and take the most amazing shower I have had in a while! Until tomorrow, bye blog!